An effort to keep memories alive / ANGEL ISLAND: Future museum puts out the call for information about the West's second-largest immigrant group -- 60,000 Japanese

Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, September 14, 2006

Photo: Christina Koci Hernandez

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Donald Nakahata holds his grandfather's marriage ledger.The grandfather was a pastor in SF who performed many weddings for the Japanese women who went through Angel Island when they came to America under arranged marriages (they're sometimes called "picture brides"). (CHRISTINA KOCI HERNANDEZ/THE CHRONICLE) Mandatory Credit For Photographer and San Francisco Chronicle/No-Sales-Mags Out less

Donald Nakahata holds his grandfather's marriage ledger.The grandfather was a pastor in SF who performed many weddings for the Japanese women who went through Angel Island when they came to America under ... more

Photo: Christina Koci Hernandez

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ANGELISLAND_DISEMBARKING Credit: California State Parks Collection
Note regarding retouching: The photos were provided retouched and it is not believed that it was done by either the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation or the California State Parks Collection. less

ANGELISLAND_DISEMBARKING Credit: California State Parks Collection
Note regarding retouching: The photos were provided retouched and it is not believed that it was done by either the Angel Island Immigration ... more

Photo: California State Parks Collectio

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Donald Nakahata holds his grandfather's marriage ledger.The grandfather was a pastor in SF who performed many weddings for the Japanese women who went through Angel Island when they came to America under arranged marriages (they're sometimes called "picture brides"). (CHRISTINA KOCI HERNANDEZ/THE CHRONICLE) Mandatory Credit For Photographer and San Francisco Chronicle/No-Sales-Mags Out less

Donald Nakahata holds his grandfather's marriage ledger.The grandfather was a pastor in SF who performed many weddings for the Japanese women who went through Angel Island when they came to America under ... more

Photo: Christina Koci Hernandez

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ANGELISLAND_BRIDGE
This is the "picture bride" photo of Hisayo Yoshino sent to her prospective Japanese husband, Sahei Makimoto, in America. She spent three weeks on Angel Island, and they were married in San Francisco on Sept. 13, 1912 shortly after her arrival.
Courtesy of Janice Muto less

ANGELISLAND_BRIDGE
This is the "picture bride" photo of Hisayo Yoshino sent to her prospective Japanese husband, Sahei Makimoto, in America. She spent three weeks on Angel Island, and they were married in San ... more

Photo: Janice Muto

An effort to keep memories alive / ANGEL ISLAND: Future museum puts out the call for information about the West's second-largest immigrant group -- 60,000 Japanese

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It was America's Western welcome mat, to put a positive spin on it.

The Angel Island Immigration Station is famous as the place where Chinese immigrants were processed, probed and often detained, sometimes for long periods. Many carved their frustration in poems still visible in the old barracks walls.

But the story of the second-largest group to pass through Angel Island is hardly known.

Hoping to fill a hole in history, organizers of the emerging museum and education complex on Angel Island want to shed light on the experiences of Japanese who got their first taste of America at the immigration station in San Francisco Bay.

"All we really know is about the Chinese," said Judy Yung, a UC Santa Cruz professor emerita conducting research for the project.

As plans and construction move forward on restoring the historic site, organizers have appealed to Japanese Americans for information about the Japanese experience.

"Our hope is to recover some of the memories and stories from the descendants," said Yung, who is co-authoring a book on the immigration station with University of Minnesota Associate Professor Erika Lee.

One of the most prized finds uncovered so far is a pocket-size, leather-bound register of "picture bride" marriages performed in San Francisco nearly 100 years ago. Found by retired Mill Valley dentist and UCSF Professor Don Nakahata in the effects of his late aunt, the ledger records about 600 weddings performed by Nakahata's grandfather, Barnabas Hisayoshi Terasawa.

"My grandfather was one of the first indigenous Anglican priests of Japan," Nakahata said. "He came over as a missionary at the turn of the century."

Yung is trying to match the register names with immigration records at the San Bruno branch of the National Archives, which house many records on immigrants to California.

Like a small version of New York's Ellis Island, which processed about 12 million immigrants between 1892 and 1954, Angel Island served from 1910 to 1940 as the West Coast portal to the United States. The largest group to pass through consisted of an estimated 175,000 Chinese immigrants, followed by about 60,000 Japanese. Russians were the third-largest group, followed by citizens of India, said Erika Gee, the foundation's education director.

Chinese immigrants have drawn more attention not only because of their larger number but also because they generally endured longer stays and more difficulties, Yung said. Though both Chinese and Japanese faced hostility in that period, Chinese were subjected to tighter immigration controls and many resorted to using false documents, which in turn resulted in stricter screening, Yung said.

The project aims to add not only the Japanese story but also the unknown sagas of people of other nationalities who made Angel Island one of the most culturally diverse way stations on the planet.

Yung's current emphasis is on Japan, and she and Lee will gradually include other nations.

"It's more than Chinese," said Daphne Kwok , executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. "It was other Asians, Australians, South Americans, Europeans, Mexicans, Central Americans."

Added Yung, "There were at least 60 nationalities who went through."

The book is to be published in 2010, when the full complex -- including a research center in the rebuilt hospital -- is scheduled to be completed. The station is now closed to the public, but the restored barracks and an outdoors exhibit showing the original-size "footprint" and sections of the administration building are scheduled to open next summer, Kwok said.

Fear of a mother-in-law sends Japanese bride to faraway land

At age 16 in Japan, Hisayo Yoshino didn't know she'd have oodles of descendants someday in Northern California, much less that they'd recall the leap she was about to take.

Nor did she realize her story would be forever retold in the emerging restoration of Angel Island's immigration station.

But the teenager living near Hiroshima in 1910 knew one thing for sure.

She didn't want to wed the husband arranged for her, even if he stood to inherit his family's wealth as the eldest son. He and his wife would also inherit the care of his parents.

"In the olden days," said Yoshino's daughter, Janice Muto, 73, of Concord, "the mother-in-law could make a young bride's life hell."

A teenage friend who had married the oldest son of another family would regularly visit Yoshino in tears over the hardships she faced.

Yoshino persuaded her parents to break her engagement, and she joined the thousands of "picture brides" who arranged through the exchange of photos to marry Japanese men who had come to California years earlier.

Little did she know that her stomach-punishing voyage across the Pacific in the summer of 1912 would be followed by tears of her own in the first weeks at her new home on a remote orchard in Placer County.

Her first ordeal in the United States, however, came as soon she stepped onto Angel Island.

"A physical found she had intestinal worms," said Muto. She had to take daily medication and remain at the immigration station for three weeks.

Finally she joined her new husband, Sahei Makimoto, to begin their life on the farm. Instead of the streets paved with gold that she dreamed of in Japan, Yoshino found herself alone with five men far from most comforts of civilization, Muto said. She cried every day for three weeks.

But other Japanese wives arrived soon, and hardships were gradually overcome -- until they were all relocated into internment camps during World War II. Yoshino survived that, too, and lived to age 97, leaving six children, eighteen grandchildren and a couple dozen great-grandchildren.

Share your memories

Those who have information to share about the immigrant experience at Angel Island are asked to contact the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation at (415) 561-2160 or info@aiisf.org. They can write

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